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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7110 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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You're using foreign concepts from foreign languages to try to tell me about America. There's a reason that there is no equivalent American word, because there is no equivalent American concept, because that is a fundamentally foreign belief system.

More like I'm using foreign language to break free of the propaganda that is relentlessly imposed upon us all.

No more illegal this, alien that, hyphenated American the next one. Foreigner. They're just foreigners, no other description necessary.

You're using a foreign language to try to import a foreign concept from a foreign culture. Akhil Reed Amar is not a foreigner, you'd know this if you knew anything about him, or his work.

"Foreigner" as a word in American English does not describe a person born in Michigan, raised in California, living in Connecticut. If you used it in conversation it would confuse people. You're reaching for the Japanese concept because you want to make my country more like Japan, I don't.

Akhil Reed Amar is not a foreigner, you'd know this if you knew anything about him, or his work.

I wouldn't call him a foreigner, but my WW2 vet grandfather absolutely would have (and did within my hearing for other similarly-situated individuals of Indian heritage).

Past tense being used here to indicate death I assume? My condolences, though at this point even a soldier who enlisted at 17 in '45 would be 97 or something.

In the fifties and sixties this might have been accurate to a reasonable degree, there were zero Indian Americans born in Michigan who went on to become important scholars. One could ignore them or wish them away. That isn't the case now, one must deal with Kash Patel and Akhil Reed Amar whether one likes it or not.

Well, I'd rather not get into a prescriptivist vs descriptivist argument.

They are foreigners to me, and no passport will change my mind.

You're reaching for the Japanese concept because you want to make my country more like Japan, I don't.

The Japanese concept is not exclusive to Japan, and you find it throughout American history. Those parts of which have been excised from the common teaching, and therefore I had to come to it from Japan.

The thing that makes America more like Japan is more Japanese people, which is why I don't want America to become more like Somalia, Mexico, India, or elsewhere. I want America to be for the Americans, that is, the pioneers and settlers whose labor tamed this continent and brought civilization to its farthest reaches. The people who, by the time of the American Revolution, had already become a separate and distinct people.

Tradition ist die Weitergabe des Feuers und nicht die Anbetung der Asche.

The thing that will make America more like Japan is if we turn into an insular people, focused on our past and our heritage and our purity. You're so frightened of America you want to turn it into a foreign country.

Kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living, and counted the old names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry, or in high, cold towers asking questions of the stars. And so the people of Gondor fell into ruin.

A fair and level criticism. However, there are other ways to make America not-America, and that includes whatever the hell Alejandro Mayorkas did for four years.

You can guard against America becoming Japan, I suppose. But the weapons against becoming Japan cannot stop you from becoming Brazil or, worse, Zimbabwe.

I want America to be for the Americans, that is, the pioneers and settlers whose labor tamed this continent and brought civilization to its farthest reaches.

These people died. Their grandsons pioneer no longer, the land has been settled and the continent tamed. Whoever today carries the qualities that make them most like the Americans of three hundred years ago, is not likely to carry them because they have inherited them through an unbroken patrilineal chain of heritage extending to Mayflower.

Yes, the continent was tamed. Why does that mean I have to allow millions of Indians and Mexicans and Chinamen to live in it?

Whoever today carries the qualities that make them most like the Americans of three hundred years ago, is not likely to carry them because they have inherited them through an unbroken patrilineal chain of heritage extending to Mayflower.

I disagree completely. While the circumstances of their lives were obviously different, their posterity inherits from them their mannerisms, attitudes, proclivities, and ways of life. You can stray from your heritage, but you can't escape it.

Also, Jamestown was the beginning of America, not Plymouth Rock.

Why does that mean I have to allow millions of Indians and Mexicans and Chinamen to live in it?

It's not up to just your decision. The question I'd suggest you ask instead would sound more like "how do I get people who don't want to bother proving the purity of their blood to vote/fight for me?".

their posterity inherits from them their mannerisms, attitudes, proclivities, and ways of life.

If true, a birth certificate would not be required to see it. In the best scenario (a person with completely unmixed 1776 heritage), they carry the potential for those qualities that might have blossomed in similar circumstances. You might notice that circumstances are not the same. And what I think of potential men can be summarized like so.

That it is in your, as you put it earlier today, ethnic interest to claim the suffrage in USA as solely yours is not cohering with the arguments you put up. If America must belong to the descendants of the founding fathers because of the heritage rights, make your point so. When you bring vibes about pioneerhood and the American spirit into it, it exposes that there are a great many Indians with more American spirit than you.

I don’t know about American, but the English word is “foreigner”. It doesn’t refer to your passport.

Thank God and Ben Franklin I'm not English then.

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